Recognising professional development

I was volunteering at my local football club providing first aid cover yesterday afternoon. It was pretty quiet in terms of the number of patients treated which was good as it meant I got time to catch up with people that I’ve not really spoke to since I was back last Christmas!

The one patient that I did treat was a bloke in his 50’s whose main complaint was that his legs had given way and he’d fallen. I was working in the main first aid room so essentially he was my patient. It was a pretty routine job, nothing serious and he was discharged back to the event after about 20 minutes.

Reflecting on the job afterwards and I realised just how much confidence I have developed over the past year, just by being on the wards and doing/seeing more. It felt good to be able to take a full focussed history, do a relevant exam, and exclude any red flag symptoms. All the time I was working through a list of differentials in my head, and deciding what we were going to do for the patient. I even had to use a few of the communication skills developed in my psychiatry placement in the history. It felt great to be able to feel confident in my abilities to manage this patient and its something that I know I wasn’t able to do completely at this stage last year. Good sign for the future too I guess!

The rest of the event passed without incident, and I even got to leave slightly early to avoid the traffic.

I need to decide when I’m going to head back to Uni – officially I don’t start back till until 21st Jan but I think I’ll go crazy if I stay here until then so an early return coupled with picking up some shifts at work might be the way forward, especially now that ‘normal’ daytime tv has returned and there’s no more Christmas specials/films to watch – today’s highlights were Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Mary Poppins – super stuff.

Thats all for now, take care

SD

p.s. I’m loving the comments, keep them coming – its nice to know that people are reading!